1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing system.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventionally the performance of a copier has been limited to faithful reproduction of an original or magnification or reduction of the original image with a fixed ratio.
Such copier basically functions by illuminating the original with a light source such as a fluorescent lamp or a tungsten lamp, projecting the reflected light from said original through lenses and mirrors onto a photosensitive member charged in advance thereby forming an electrostatic latent image thereon, and applying developer onto said photosensitive member to obtain a visible image. Consequently the image forming process is conducted all under mechanical control, and the magnification or reduction of the original image is achieved through a relative change between the lens movement and the original scanning speed. The range of multiple functions in such conventional copier is inevitably limited, since such lens movement or speed change has a certain physical limit. It has also been difficult to arbitrarily move the image position on the copy sheet, and such movement has been considerably limited.
Also there is proposed a copier in which the original image is once stored in a memory and then read as image data for making a print, but such apparatus is quite unsatisfactory as a copier since an extremely long time is required from the start of image scanning to the completion of printing operation.
Besides the conventional copier is often unable to produce a satisfactory image quality from an original with a dark background, and is unable to faithfully reproduce certain originals such as photographs.
Furthermore, in copying with a modified size different from the original size, the selection of direction of original or of image magnification becomes quite cumbersome with the increase in the sizes of copy sheets and of originals.
Furthermore, in book copying, it is often difficult to place the book to be copied on an exact position on the platen, and is therefore difficult to obtain the copied image on a desired position of the copy sheet. Also in such book copying mode, the image quality is inevitably deteriorated since shadows are formed around the book and reproduced on the copy. Also in case of copying both pages at left and at right of an open book, the book has to be moved at each copying operation.